The Justice Department has been quietly removing and withholding documents from the public Epstein files database that contain sexual abuse allegations against President Donald Trump, according to an NPR investigation published Tuesday.
The missing material includes what appears to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews and notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse when she was a minor.
Let that sink in for a moment: Out of more than three million pages released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law literally designed to force maximum disclosure, the DOJ managed to lose track of the specific pages that mention the sitting president.
What NPR Found
NPR’s investigation identified two women whose allegations involving Trump surfaced in the released Epstein files, but whose broader interview records have been either withheld from initial publication or pulled from the DOJ’s public database after they went live.
The first woman alleged that around 1983, when she was approximately 13 years old, Epstein introduced her to Trump. She described a violent sexual encounter that the FBI apparently took seriously enough to interview her four times, according to an FBI “Serial Report” and a list of Non-Testifying Witness Material from the Ghislaine Maxwell criminal case.
Here’s the thing: despite those four FBI interviews, the only place this specific allegation appears in the 3.5 million released pages is in copies of an FBI summary list of claims and a DOJ slideshow presentation. The underlying interview documents? Nowhere to be found in the public database.
The second woman, who testified against Maxwell and was interviewed six times by the FBI between September 2019 and September 2021, described how Epstein and Maxwell began abusing her when she was around 13 while she attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts. She recounted being taken to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, where Epstein reportedly introduced her to Trump.
That FBI interview was published in the DOJ’s database on January 30 during the final major document release, then removed at some point afterward. It was quietly republished on February 19, according to document metadata NPR reviewed. Meanwhile, a separate interview with the woman’s mother, who recalled hearing about Trump and a prince visiting Epstein’s home, remains offline as of publication.
The DOJ’s Explanation Doesn’t Add Up
The Justice Department told NPR that the only reason files have been “temporarily removed” is because victims or their counsel flagged them for additional review. That’s a reasonable-sounding explanation in isolation, but it collapses under the weight of context.
The DOJ has been hammered from every direction over its handling of these files. Survivors have accused the department of exposing victim names and personal information while simultaneously protecting the identities of powerful men. Victims’ attorney Robert Glassman didn’t mince words with NPR, calling the entire process “ridiculous” and accusing the DOJ of exposing courageous victims while the men who abused them remain shielded.
A DOJ spokesperson said the department is working “around the clock” to address victims’ concerns and handle additional redactions. But the pattern NPR uncovered isn’t about victim protection. It’s about specific pages that happen to mention the President of the United States being pulled or never appearing at all.
The Transparency Act Was Supposed To Prevent Exactly This
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed by Trump himself on November 19, 2025, was supposed to be the definitive answer to years of speculation about what the government knew about Epstein’s criminal network. The law required the attorney general to make all relevant files publicly available in searchable, downloadable format.
The DOJ has acknowledged possessing more than six million potentially responsive pages. Only about 3.5 million have been released. Despite this, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche declared on January 30 that the department had fulfilled its legal obligations. Democrats in Congress, led by Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie (in a rare bipartisan pairing), have pushed back aggressively, requesting access to unredacted files and questioning why roughly half the documents remain unpublished.
The release process itself has been a rolling disaster. The DOJ blew its original December 19 deadline, released documents in waves rather than all at once, and managed the remarkable feat of redacting perpetrator names while accidentally publishing victims’ identities, nude images, and personal financial data. When members of Congress began reviewing unredacted files on secure DOJ servers, AG Bondi was photographed with a document tracking a congresswoman’s search history of the files, sparking bipartisan outrage and a House Democratic investigation.
An FBI Note Tells Its Own Story
Perhaps the most telling detail in NPR’s report is a note written by someone in the FBI on July 22, 2025, months before the Transparency Act even passed. The note acknowledged that Trump’s name appeared in case files and that “one identified victim claimed abuse by Trump but ultimately refused to cooperate.”
That note exists in the released files. The actual interview records behind it do not. NPR identified unique serial numbers on either side of where the missing pages should appear, a digital paper trail confirming the gap exists.
Blanche stated publicly during the January 30 press conference that the DOJ “did not protect President Trump.” NPR’s forensic review of the database suggests otherwise, or at the very least, that the DOJ’s explanation for why Trump-related documents keep appearing and disappearing deserves far more scrutiny than it has received.
What Happens Next
This story lands on the same day Trump is set to deliver his first State of the Union address of his second term. The timing is coincidental, but the political dynamics are not. Congressional oversight of the Epstein files has become one of the few genuinely bipartisan pressure points in Washington, with both Republican and Democratic members demanding full transparency.
The question now is whether NPR’s detailed forensic work translates into institutional action. The Judiciary Committees in both chambers have the authority to demand answers. Survivors and their attorneys are already pushing for accountability. And the simple mathematical reality remains: roughly three million pages that the DOJ itself identified as responsive to the Transparency Act have never been published.
The law was supposed to settle the question of what the government knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s network. Instead, every new revelation about what’s missing from the files raises the same uncomfortable question the Transparency Act was designed to answer: who, exactly, is being protected?